CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A lawyer for Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Shirley Strickland Saffold says that the judge and her daughter jointly created the cleveland.com username "lawmiss," who has posted 83 comments on the website, including criticisms of Cleveland leaders, discussions of criminal cases in Saffold's courtroom and disparagement of judges and lawyers practicing in the courthouse.

Now, other commenters on cleveland.com have noted a similarity between the lawmiss comments and postings under the username "governmentwatcher."

Comments under the two usernames cover many of the same topics, criticize many of the same people, misspell some of the same words and use identical colloquialisms. They also both stopped posting comments on the same day, March 19, for unknown reasons.

Saffold has denied making the lawmiss comments about cases in her courtroom, but she has declined to be interviewed about whether she posted governmentwatcher comments.

The Plain Dealer sought to interview her about whether she left lawmiss or governmentwatcher comments attacking the late Stephanie Tubbs Jones, U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, Cleveland Schools CEO Eugene Sanders and Cleveland Clerk of the Court Earle Turner.

"Her behavior has been disgraceful," lawmiss wrote of Tubbs Jones in June 2008. "She's totally out of control. Too bad she doesn't have significant competition."

And about Cleveland City Councilman Kevin Conwell, in April 2009, lawmiss said: "why would any of us care what the actions of an ineffective, silly, bumbling idiot chose to do? His lack of leadership is so pronouned that the only person worse in council than him a Loud-mouth publicity seeking Zack Reed."

Cuyahoga County computer records show that Saffold's courthouse computer was often visiting cleveland.com when lawmiss and governmentwatcher comments were posted.

The Plain Dealer filed a request for public records showing all websites visited by the desktop computer assigned to Saffold. The computer is in Saffold's private chambers, across a hallway from her courtroom. County computer servers keep track of the time and date and Web domain of each site visited by each computer on a county server. The servers take note every time a computer user hits the "enter" button, to visit a website, refresh a Web page or submit an online comment.

In response to the newspaper's request, the court administrator provided 849 pages of data, detailing all Internet activity by Saffold's computer from Jan. 4. Through March 19. Earlier records are unavailable. The newspaper compared the dates and times that Saffold's computer visited pages on cleveland.com to the dates and times that comments were left by lawmiss and governmentwatcher.

Altogether, 50 lawmiss and governmentwatcher comments were posted within two minutes of Saffold's computer clicking on a page at cleveland.com or an affiliated site, advance.net, the analysis found.

Beyond those 50, three other lawmiss or governmentwatcher comments were posted during times when Saffold's computer was actively surfing the internet outside of cleveland.com or advance.net, the analysis found. As for the lawmiss and governmentwatcher comments posted when Saffold's computer was not surfing the Internet, most were posted outside of office hours, on holidays, weekends or evenings, the analysis shows.

The Plain Dealer reported in March that the lawmiss username was created with an e-mail account that Saffold has used. It was created by her ex-husband, she said, and is used by seven family members. Saffold's 23-year-old daughter, Sydney, who lives in Columbus, told The Plain Dealer for a story published March 26 that she posted all of the lawmiss comments, but she was unable to say how many.

Saffold's lawyer, Brian Spitz, requested that The Plain Dealer submit questions about this story in writing. Spitz responded by posting the written questions on his law firm's website along with a press release announcing he would not answer questions from the newspaper outside of the discovery process.

Spitz has filed a $50 million lawsuit on behalf of Saffold and her daughter against The Plain Dealer and affiliated companies. The lawsuit claims the defendants breached a website privacy policy by reporting that the lawmiss username was created with an AOL e-mail address that Saffold has described as "my account."

The lawmiss postings have become a factor in the trial of Anthony Sowell, who attracted international attention last year after the bodies of 11 women were found in his Imperial Avenue house and buried in his yard.

Saffold was the presiding judge in Sowell's case, but Sowell's lawyers asked the Ohio Supreme Court to disqualify Saffold from hearing the case. They said the lawmiss comments about the Sowell case, and one comment disparaging one of Sowell's lawyers, gave the appearance of personal bias or prejudice by Saffold. On Thursday, Ohio Chief Justice Paul E. Pfeifer removed her from the case.

Governmentwatcher has been more prolific than lawmiss. Of the 83 comments posted by lawmiss since 2007, 16 are about cases in Saffold's courtroom. Governmentwatcher has posted 193 comments since first appearing in September, and 19 are about Saffold cases.

Some comments reveal familiarity with the cases, as with a governmentwatcher comment about Elsebeth Baumgartner. Saffold sentenced Baumgartner to prison in 2006 for trying to intimidate another judge with bogus lawsuits and threats.

"I was on the baumgartner case, i know what i'm talking about," the governmentwatcher comment says.

Lawmiss and governmentwatcher both have strong opinions about convicted wife-killer Dr. Yazeed Essa. Both commenters posted long and opinionated criticism of Plain Dealer reporters and columnists, especially Phillip Morris and Regina Brett, as well as about an investigation into county corruption.

Lawmiss and governmentwatcher also show a fondness for hyperbole and each has used some of the same words -- insane, lunatic, moron -- as well as the expression "gheez."

Each commenter has made the same spelling errors, including the misspelling of the word "liar" in comments posted March 19 about a column written by Morris, Saffold's cousin. A comment by governmentwatcher at 2:50 p.m. references "a lier." Six hours later, lawmiss twice uses "lier" in commenting on the column.

Governmentwatcher and lawmiss misspelled another word -- arrogant -- while commenting about court clerk Turner, though they posted the comments six months apart. On June 7, 2009, lawmiss suggested that Turner ought to resign, and goes on to state that "He's arrogrant, self-indulged and not that smart." On Dec, 18, 2009, governmentwatcher makes similarly disparaging comments about Turner. "And, if you spend time talking to him, he's so arrogrant that he thinks he's much more than he is."

Saffold's lawyer, Spitz, criticized the paper Wednesday for exploring the identity of another commenter.

"Despite the fact that the Plain Dealer has repeatedly reported that Advance Internet has taken steps to correct prior errors that had allowed reporters to breach the promised confidentiality, it is clear that the Plain Dealer still intends to continue breaching this promise at its whim. Should the Plain Dealer breach this promise again, I will gladly represent 'governmentwatcher' in another claim against the Plain Dealer.

"The Plain Dealer's attorney, David Marburger wrote in an April 20, 2010 email to Spitz that the Plain Dealer 'will provide info to you only in response to discovery requests that comply with the Rules of Civil Procedure.' As the Plain Dealer has opted for this route, the Saffolds will comply and exchange information accordingly."

The newspaper's disclosure of the link between lawmiss and an e-mail account that Saffold has used has been controversial with some cleveland.com commenters, who say they believed they couldn't be identified on the website.

A Plain Dealer online editor looked up the e-mail address for lawmiss -- which was accessible through software used to post stories to the website -- after lawmiss posted a comment about the mental state of a Plain Dealer reporter's relative.

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